Living the Live in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta

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Month: December 2013

Somehow we are always trying to establish a continuum in our Life. The things we like we invite to stay with us forever and at the same time we immediately want to get rid of the shadow parts. We always look for the unchangeable in the changeable. But now what when we are seriously looking for an answer on: Who am I? Of course, even in our meditations we act the same as we always do: we position our-self as the unchangeable, watching the changeable. This way we still act like we are used to.

Look at a baby that is helplessly waiting for care. Without any assistance the newborn will die pretty soon. From our first moments in this world we need care, on all levels of existence. For a grown up it is rather simple. You are hungry and you find a way to buy some food and you will eat it soon after. Now look at the difference between you as a baby and as a grown up.

During the years you have learned to talk, to walk, to plan, to work, to cook, even to digest properly. You have learned countless methods to build yourself a working physical state with on top of the cake a partner to love, a comfortable home, proper education, a job , money, healthcare, a pension-plan. You easily can fill up this list with many other desires. Picture yourself as the little baby and now. Over the years you have build up a full body-worldsystem of identification, all set up in a perfect functioning dream of space and time.

For a baby there is no world. Even objects appear to be blurry colour-patterns. It is not made to survive on itself. But from day one the body will learn itself to survive. Identifications will grow, building up safety, each at a time. Noticeably the Idea of a separate existing body in a world of objects will appear to be. And this is how it should function otherwise the body, THE IDEA, would die. The body is there and has learned to live and survive. It is perfectly fit for it.

For a body the natural knowledge and learning-curve how to survive has to be born out of something deeper. And that is the Idea of separation, and therefore the urge to protect itself. How come? Well, in essence the birth of the body is THE EXPRESSION of separation itself already. This whole physical state IS build on fear of death and is urging itself to overcome death, because IT undoubtedly KNOWS there is just LIFE, as in CONSCIOUSNESS itself! Why would your heart beat, why would your longs function, why are your organs and blood doing its job. Yes, they all work together to survive death!

The physical world is build upon THE IDEA of mortality. Everything has been created to live a long and happy life with the avoidance of pain and sorrow leading to sickness and death. Deep down we know all this. Birth and death are part of the same IDEA. We even create the idea of an eternal soul, a heaven or a someone who can reach enlightenment, or we like to live the buddha as the unchangeable watcher on the hill. Even then, we want to survive.

And it is all so very natural….

When you sit on your couch and you start to meditate like the best you can there is one thing left to understand. You are THIS, the IDEA that created the unchangeable in the changeable. This has to be seen, This has to be understood. Probably now you think. ah.. I know what he means: I am both, I am all there is, I am beyond the world of objects and therefore beyond the changeable in the unchangeable. This is the tricky mind, because now you have to take the next step. A step into the abyss. And like a teenage girl who wants to experience her first love, you first will know when you have taken the invitation to jump into the ocean.

Let me tell you this. All my articles refer direct to what you ARE: THIS. Not there, not here; just THIS is it. THIS what ‘ you ‘ARE, nothing more, nothing less. Within all THIS, there has to be understood something very important if you want to realize your true nature. And when you really get into this, not just as a solid thought, but as in the core of existence itself, there is not much left to get, to reach or even to be.

Before we go deeper into THIS, I will ask you to close your eyes for about 5 minutes. Within just a small piece your daily routine that I want you to relax and just observe without being focused on something. Just be.

Now, in these 5 minutes you have experienced what I call the physical state. This is the state of Time and Space. You have noticed Time, because you let the little meditation happen for about 5 minutes. You created a past, a now and a future for your exercise. You did this in a comfortable position, laying or sitting in a room, a house or on a bench in the park with your smart phone within reach to read the article. You will also observe the world around you: objects in any shapes and seizes. This is your created Space. Time and Space. that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

yoga

I remember my own moments of doing nothing. I went to Buddhist groups, took meditation classes, I did Yoga and was very serious to be real deep and sacred with my meditations. I was pretty good on sitting on my couch, for hours and hours, just with some traditional slow-paced walking brakes. This was how I learned to do it during my Buddhist classes. Later on, working with Yoga and even the years with my teacher of Advaita Vedanta, Alexander Smit, I kept doing these exercises ongoing. One day it left me, like it had found me once and I learned that meditation practice is great to relax a lot of mind-clutter, but when you really want to realize yourself, it also can create one of the biggest illusions.

This reality-state, your time and space creation, has the mechanism of change. Nothing remains the same, not even a split second. Countless molecules are constant on the move and even your body is part of this dance of change like any other object. Everything you can observe from the universe, including thoughts and feelings, is on the move to grow, to change, to disappear, to be born. We cry for joy when new life arrives and we encounter a great loss when a beloved one suddenly dies. Attachment is part of the physical existence. We get attached to our language, habits, surrounding, people, even the label of coffee and toothpaste. We even prefer to follow a more or less pattern of routines, day in, day out. Not only we humans live like that, but also animals and even plants, that follow the rhythm of the seasons.

Somehow we are always trying to establish a continuum in our Life. The things we like we invite to stay with us forever and at the same time we want to get rid immediately of the shadow parts of life. We always look for the unchangeable in the changeable. But now what when we are seriously looking for an answer: Who am I?